For his latest CD Ivo Kahanek has recorded major piano works by the
three most important Czech composers of the 20th century. For more than
merely chronologically reasons he starts the CD with Janacek's
two-movement, programmatically conceived Sonata in E flat minor (1905),
Its two movements (entitled Premonition and Death), were directly
inspired by a tragic event in Brno, which the composer then cast in a
highly individually stylised form. Janacek was not himself a piano
virtuoso and most of his piano works are very difficult to play from the
point of view of traditional piano training. His thematically important,
often sharply rhythmatised figurations (known as scasovky) have caused
particularly serious problems of a purely technical kind even for
advanced pianists.

Although in appearance and performance Kahanek is more reminiscent
of a romantic virtuosos of Lisztian type, he manages almost surprisingly
to exploit his extraordinary skills as a pianist to bring out the
distinctive features of the music of individual composers in modern
repertoire as well. In the first movement of the Janacek Sonata we
might, however take issue with what is in places too grand and
"romanticising" a use of pedal, which sometimes deprives the
conclusions of some melodic-chord figurations of their typically
"Janacekian" terseness and impact. The development of the
basic theme and the secondary lyrical idea has the necessarily emotional
pull and very clearly articulated urgency, and it is very rare for
Kahanek to allow the otherwise marvellous performance effects (from the
brilliant sequence of pianissimo to the demonically fast semi-quaver
figures in the transition into the second theme) to "drown"
the melodic line. This could be praised in a piece by Debussy, but
Janacek's expressive style is a long way from French musical
impressionism. With the first bars of the second movement (Death),
Kahanek has managed to endow his interpretation with an unearthly calm
and majesty--entirely in line with his view as given in the interview
printed in the CD booklet: "I understand the titles of the
movements in their widest, even metaphysical meaning". He builds
the emotionally extreme gradation of the central section into a wholly
convincing climax unusual in its intensity. I am particularly impressed
at the way the pianist's phenomenal technical skills enable him to
offer an entirely satisfactory realisation of the extremely difficult,
sharply rhythmatised figurations in the left hand (perhaps a depiction
of death spasms). In contrast to the intensely dramatic character of
Janacek's sonata, Miloslav Kabelac's Eight Preludes of 1956 is
introverted, and the emotions here are almost drastically subordinated
to the composer's overall architectonic plan. Kabelac's method
as a composer found its best application in his grandly conceived
symphonies, and his piano preludes are not exactly rewarding from the
point of view of traditional classical-romantic instrumental virtuosity;
they are pieces in which the composer's theory of rational
construction is applied consistently and the freedom of interpretation
tolerated to a far greater extent in his earlier stylistic periods is
here extremely curtailed by the perfectionist demands of the written
part. Even so, we can see that in Kahanek these preludes have found
their ideal performer, because with his disciplined virtuosity he
manages unobtrusively but effectively to animate and
"humanise" what are often very severe or even geometrically
cold lines.

Bohuslav Martinu wrote his only Piano sonata at the age of 64
(1954), during his happy stay on the French Riviera. It represents the
composer's supreme, synthesising style, which had first emerged
strikingly in the preceding year in the Symphonic Fantasies. Externally
the sonata keeps to the classic three-movement scheme, but in its rich
internal content it can be seen as to a great extent the successful
piano counterpart of the composer's late orchestral works. It is a
tough nut to crack for any performer, mainly because of its comparative
lack of formal transparency and its frequent figurative passages. In
Martinu's late music, all the figurations and imaginatively
distinctive passages carry a meaning deeper than mere decoration or
filling, and at some points they have an unearthly intensity. Here too
Kahanek confirms his unique and universal abilities; in his performance
not even the less striking places in terms of motif are never pure
"stuffing" and never lose their attraction for listeners.

Included on the CD at the end--as a kind of curiosity and
"bonus" is the world premiere of three school fugues by Leos
Janacek (from the period of his studies in Leipzig), which were only
discovered a few years ago and recently printed. The accompanying
booklet, which contains quite a lengthy interview with the pianist, is
very informative and impressive in terms of graphic design.

COPYRIGHT 2009 Czech Music Information
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.